


One Thousand Two Hundred and Seventy-Three Times the Briefcase Didn't Work

by bonyenne



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Dave & Klaus Hargreeves During Vietnam, Death, Gen, M/M, Missing Scene, Not necessarily graphic depictions of violence but strong implications of it, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:20:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21547483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonyenne/pseuds/bonyenne
Summary: Klaus spends ten months trying to make that briefcase work.Ten months trying to get back home.Even when it isn't home anymore.
Relationships: Dave/Klaus Hargreeves
Comments: 20
Kudos: 90





	One Thousand Two Hundred and Seventy-Three Times the Briefcase Didn't Work

* * *

**…and the One Fucking Time it Did.**

* * *

Klaus doesn’t remember the briefcase exists, that first night.

He doesn’t even realize he’s back where he arrived until someone tells him so and pushes him into the nearest cot. He squints up at them, trying to figure out if he’s dead or they’re alive. Something is wrong but he can’t think through the headache. He tries to get up but they push him back down again, and he almost panics before remembering that’s how it’s supposed to be.

Except there should be a chair, not a cot.

He must have hit his head harder than he thought.

He doesn’t remember falling asleep, either. One moment he’s staring at mud smearing from a torn fingernail all the way down to his knuckles like crusted blood, wondering where the duct tape went, and the next he’s screaming himself awake. He’s not the only one.

Klaus scrambles back, drawing up short against the pole at the head of his cot, and the ghost leans into his space, reaching toward him, grasping at his shirt with icy fingers that suck the oxygen right out of Klaus’ lungs with every brush against his skin. He dives out of the cot, clapping his hands over his eyes, his ears, his eyes again, until someone nudges him with a foot, at which point he cracks his fingers just enough to see the ghost still in his cot… and a crusty towel on the floor next to him, half draped over a briefcase.

Memories of a motel, ghosts, fading footsteps and the pain of crashing his head into a table again and again and again come crashing into his head in a wash of blue blue blue light, and he yanks the briefcase toward him, flicking the latches open to find…

Nothing.

Maybe it didn’t shut all the way, before. He closes them, pushing till he hears a click, and opens them again.

Nothing happens.

And again.

Nothing.

—

One of the men leads him away to breakfast but he’s off-kilter the whole time. People talk to him but he doesn’t hear. All the food tastes wrong and he can’t get more than a few bites down.

He stumbles to the briefcase again the minute he gets back, trying the little dials this time.

They don’t turn.

He’s still uselessly hitting the buttons when they drag him out to the next battle.

—

He tries again that night, and keeps trying until he falls asleep, his fingers still tangled in the handle.

—

He throws himself at it four times the next day, and more the day after that, shaking, surrounded by screaming ghosts, bloody and looming over him as he lies in a puddle of tears and vomit, until that nice man finds him, Dan or Dale or something horribly normal that he never wants to hear again, and pulls him away, gently tucking him into the cot and making sure he stays there while he slides the briefcase underneath.

Klaus grabs his wrist as he pulls away, desperately asking if it’s all real.

He doesn’t answer right away, and for a single heart-stopping moment Klaus wonders if he’s dead, too.

—

It takes three tries to find a living person he can ask what a guy has to do to get rid of the voices. The blurred vision isn’t new. The inability to tell between the living and the dead isn’t either. This nightmare is, though.

He just wants it all to go away.

Less than one week clean and it’s already more than he can handle.

Hell, even numbed, this will be more than he can handle, here in the middle of a mass grave that’s only growing by the hour.

—

Every chance he can get he tries the briefcase again.

He picks at the seams in case there’s a hidden trigger.

He spins in circles three times, tapping it once on every side before hitting the latches again.

He shakes it, he kicks it, he offers to bargain with it.

Somehow, it feels like it’s laughing at him.

—

Someone gets him drugs. They’re not the same; they’re not as good. But it’s not like he’s the only one seeing things out here, and it’s not like it matters out here when everyone’s dead anyway, even the living. Just point and shoot, and if the head dissolves into whispers of mist when his bullet passes through, well, nobody will know but him.

—

Most nights he wakes up screaming.

He doesn’t even know he’s screaming words until Dave asks who Ben is, or was. Klaus doesn’t know whether to say is, was, will be, or isn’t anymore.

It doesn’t matter, anyway.

Ben’s gone.

All of them are gone.

Even Klaus is gone, and none of them know to care.

—

It’s just one of his things, now.

He tries the briefcase, he goes to bed.

He wakes up screaming. The ghosts scream back. He tries the briefcase. He goes back to bed.

He wakes up again. He tries it again.

He kills some people. They scream at him. He tries the briefcase.

He goes to bed.

—

The first time someone whose name he actually knows dies, he spends a full hour kicking and screaming at the briefcase, trying to make it do something, anything at all. He doesn’t even care if he ends up back in that morbid motel room with a gun pointed directly at his head—it’s not like he doesn’t have thousands of them pointed at his head daily here.

—

He falls to his knees and begs.

He makes promises he can’t keep and actually resolves to keep them for once.

Nothing works.

—

Does Ben even exist anymore without Klaus there to tie him to the living world?

Is he looking for him? Is he suffering, lost and alone, wondering why he’s abandoned him?

Does he feel as betrayed as Klaus does?

—

Dave brings it to him in the infirmary the first time Klaus gets shot. He doesn’t understand, none of them do, but Dave at least recognizes how important it is to him. Klaus gets teary and offers to share, but Dave only laughs and says he’ll leave him to it.

Something in his chest sinks at that, like it’s the wrong answer somehow, like he’s missing something important, like he should insist.

He watches him go and wonders why.

—

He drops his gun after his first battle back, his fingers shaking, slick with what he hopes is sweat. The man next to him leans down to pick it up and screams, staring at his own body lying empty on the ground beneath them.

He’s not the only dead man here, just the newest.

—

Klaus never told anyone this, but he managed to make it all the way through his childhood in the Umbrella Academy without killing a single soul, without having a single ghost follow him home for _him_ instead of one of his siblings.

Now look at him.

Look at _this._

—

He almost loses it once.

They’re setting up a new camp and he turns around and it’s gone.

Klaus freaks out so bad that he can’t even do anything about it, and the whole unit ends up tearing the place apart on his behalf while he blindly shakes in a ball around his knees.

They find it with a pile of stuff that belonged to the dead, unclaimed, ready to be thrown away. Much like Klaus himself. He can’t help but laugh, laugh and cry and collapse against Dave’s knee, sagging loose next to the useless luggage.

He makes all of them link arms, that day, when he tries it then and there.

—

More men he knows have died than still live around him, and yet all of them remain.

Nobody blinks an eye when he forgets which ones are supposed to be there and which ones aren’t.

—

Sometimes he wonders why he keeps taking the drugs if they don’t even work most of the time.

But anything is better than nothing, and if he has to see the ghosts anyway then he might as well numb whatever else he can.

It’s not like he’s the only one doing it. Everyone needs a mental escape.

He’s just the only one trying to use a useless fucking briefcase to escape physically, too.

—

Most of them don’t realize they’re dead.

When you spend your days numbed to any feeling, wondering whether you’re soaked in sweat or grime or blood, it’s easy to guess wrong.

When you spend your nights dreaming of getting shot, or blown up, or knifed in the gut, who's to say the next time it happens isn't just another nightmare, too?

—

The longer the ones who do realize they’re dead know Klaus can see them without helping them, the more monstrous they become.

The only ghost who was ever different was Ben.

Ben was never a monster, no matter what he thought, no matter what Sir Reginald said.

Is he going to turn into one now without Klaus around to remind him he’s human?

If Klaus ever makes it back, will Ben be waiting for him?

Or will it just be _Them?_

—

One of the new recruits is from his hometown.

Klaus doesn’t ask about Reginald, even though he’s probably kicking around there by now, building his wretched Academy.

But he dreams about the mausoleum that night.

He wakes up with blood under his fingernails, Dave’s arms clamped around his shoulders, and a throat so sore he can’t get another sound out.

Klaus kills people now. The drugs aren’t as good here. There are new traumas, more ghosts. Everything about this is the worst hell he’s ever been in. His old nightmares should practically be fond memories by now, buried under a mountain of new experiences.

And yet he takes his time washing and cleaning the new gashes in his arms before trying the briefcase that day.

At least here he can fight back.

Even if it only makes things worse.

—

At least now Klaus doesn’t scream back.

—

Little Five never got to be a ghost. Klaus tried to see him, no matter how much Reginald accused him of the opposite.

He _did._

He just wasn’t enough yet, then. Another one of his many failures. He wonders if Ben ever blamed him for not holding onto the Academy’s first loss long enough for the two of them to meet again.

—

No, that’s wrong.

Five is alive now, isn’t he? Or was. Or will be? Little Fivey, fallen through a hole in time.

Like Klaus.

Except Five actually had the strength to make it home.

—

Klaus is never really going back, is he?

Even if it works eventually, the him he remembers being won’t be the one who arrives. Not really. Or at least, not entirely.

The briefcase is never going to let him go.

—

Not even death is an escape from this.

Not for them.

—

The next time he’s getting stitched up—a knife, this time—he barely wonders where the briefcase is until Dave deposits it on the chair next to his bed.

He stares at it for almost an hour, too deadened to sit up, to lean over and grab it.

It’s not like it will ever work again.

Why bother getting his hopes up?

—

The other ghosts hate him when he leaves the infirmary alive, but none of them follow.

There’s no more room for dead men in his own tent anyway.

—

The Special Forces patrol rolls in one night, their camp lost in a sudden surge of PAVN troops. Klaus can’t help but be grateful. More men here means less chances for someone he actually cares about to die.

The 8th Airborne comes back three days later reporting the full patrol lost, the bodies still littering their old camp.

Klaus hadn’t even realized they were dead.

Three days of seeing them everywhere.

Three days of believing in backup.

Three tries before his hands stop shaking enough to even pick the briefcase up that day.

Before Dave rescues him and sets it in his lap.

Who cares if it’s not going to work? He can’t fucking stay here.

He can’t.

—

He sleeps with the briefcase clutched in his arms.

He’s terrified he’ll wake up one day and it’ll be gone, back to the future without him.

—

He makes a morbid joke to the boys one day about nobody ever knowing where his body belongs because he doesn’t have dog tags and in an instant, easy as breathing, Dave’s are off and swinging over Klaus’ head instead, and his heart stops as their eyes meet and nobody but the two of them know what this means, or maybe everyone knows and nobody cares, but Klaus cares—more than he’s ever cared about anything in his life—and he finally realizes that this is what people mean when they describe what love feels like.

—

It’s worse, being in love.

There’s so much more to be afraid for.

—

Klaus can’t tell him.

Something catches in his throat every time he tries.

It doesn’t work.

It never works.

Who care if Dave knows when it’s not going to work anyway?

—

They all get matching tattoos.

The new one means so much more than the old umbrella on his wrist.

Klaus can’t explain why he’s crying.

They understand anyway.

—

These feelings for Dave, they’re different than anything he’s ever felt before. He’s never considered staying anywhere for someone in his life— _anywhere,_ not even here—but for Dave? Somehow he wants to. It’s not like the briefcase works anyway.

But then he thinks, fuck that, he’s never done anything that huge for someone in his entire life, why should he start now?

And then he thinks fuck _that,_ this is _Dave,_ this is the one man who might even come close to being worth it for him, the one man he’d quite possibly run straight into the apocalypse for; why should he run away to the dismal future without him?

And _then_ he thinks…

Why not with him?

Dave thinks it’s just another one of his quirks, but he goes along with it anyway. Together they try the briefcase, and together they stare at the sides of the tent, sharing in the disappointment, even if Dave doesn’t know why.

—

They almost forget to use the briefcase once, after the fighting keeps them awake more hours than ever before. Klaus is near dead on his feet, and Dave isn’t much better. They’re about to finally fall into bed when Tommy, all of one month deployed and already wise to Klaus’ routine, reminds them.

Klaus throws a thanks over his shoulder before glancing up to find half the kid’s face gone.

His breath catches and he grabs Dave’s hand, flipping the latches by feel alone, unable to look away.

—

The Army tries to transfer the 173rd to a calmer area after Đắk Tô decimates them, but Dave isn’t having it, not when there are people to help, things to do. He looks at Klaus and tries to say goodbye. He tells him to keep the dog tags, to hold onto the gift of quiet, the silence of the living.

He promises they’ll meet up again after this is all over.

Klaus looks at the man who regularly takes his breath away, who catches him when he wakes up screaming, who doesn’t care that half the people he sees aren’t real and he can’t tell the difference, and knows in his soul that there’s no reason to have breath without Dave there to take it away.

And so he takes up the briefcase, that cruel fucking Reginald Hargreeves of a briefcase, and follows.

—

Dave is too good for this. For all of this. For this war, for the death that drapes itself over everything in its path, for Klaus himself. Klaus makes him promise to keep trying the briefcase even if he dies. Dave tries to refuse, tries to tell Klaus he’ll be fine, but he keeps insisting till Dave gives in.

They’re all going to die.

He should know.

—

If Klaus has his way, he’ll be the one who goes first, be it accidental or on purpose. Dave calls him twitchy, always trying to push and pull him out of harm’s way. He calls Klaus a mother hen, and asks why he’s got it in his head to be worried about him now, after all these months. Klaus tries to laugh but it just comes out wild and strained.

Dave doesn’t need to understand.

He just needs to get out.

—

They tear him away from the body; they say there’s nothing he can do now. Maybe there’s nothing he can do now, but in the future, Mom, Pogo, _someone_ can help.

They have to.

Allison can Rumor him not to die.

_Something._

The battle’s right on the edge of their camp; the briefcase is _right there._

He rips himself out of their arms and runs to grab it, stumbling over the bodies and through the fire and grasping hands back to Dave’s body, back to try the briefcase the one time it really matters, the one time he truly needs it. If there’s any component of justice to this, any component of _need,_ it’ll work now.

It has to.

—

The world is dull around the edges by the time they draw him back from the line of corpses. His eyes, his throat, his ears burn, but it’s all background radiation, lost in the tangle of his fingers with Dave’s.

His heart burns too.

He barely hears the shout as he’s led past the generators, but he registers the lights, blue and white and scattering trails of black spots through his vision, an obscene echo of the hole in his heart. He registers the smell of ozone, the buzzing that reaches beyond his ears to his teeth, his gut. He registers the wire, snapped and whipping around.

Live, like Klaus.

Like every fucking man scattering around him like they care about staying that way. A breeze stirs the hair at the back of his neck as the bodies behind him draw back, leaving him alone with the briefcase, standing in the field of electricity. The briefcase that isn’t even his way home anymore, because Klaus doesn’t have a home but with Dave, and Dave’s on the other side of that wire.

Voices pull at him from behind but Klaus can’t make himself listen.

The wire whips closer and he leans forward, holding his breath, heart racing, ready to go… and screams as arms yank him backward just in time, the briefcase flying up and taking the brunt of it instead, lighting up an unearthly blue as he thrashes to get away, back to the promise of Dave.

He almost thinks he hears Dave yelling at him, but that’s wrong, Dave is gone, Dave is _there,_ and Klaus is just tying to fucking _get to him,_ and he screams at them to let him go, throwing elbows blindly behind him until he manages to break free. The wire whips away but he dives toward it, tangling in his own feet as something catches his ankle, and falling forward to land on the still-sparking briefcase.

—

His eyes focus and the empty seats fill with an unheard litany of woes.

The soulless bus rattles on.

* * *


End file.
